Pew Internet‘s recent study, Tracking For Health, revealed that 21% of people use some type of technology device to track their health data. In the New York Times article More Using Electronics To Track Their Health, Matthew Holt, co-chairman of Health 2.0 is cited as saying that there are close to 13,000 health and fitness [...]

A key indicator of overall health is your cardiovascular wellness. When you don’t have good cardiovascular wellness, you may experience symptoms such as tiredness, inability to focus, and poor muscle recovery after a workout. There are many apps available that measure your heart rate, but that is only one component of your cardiovascular wellness. In addition to [...]

Sports and personal fitness are prime opportunities for personal metrics. Continually seeking improvement and progress, people who enjoy sport at all levels often do so blind – without any type of deep understanding of their performance. Recently, Babolat, a French sport company specializing in tennis and other racquet sports, announced Play & Connect, a racquet [...]

Fitbit, the creators of the small device that measures your daily steps, sleep, and flights of stairs climbed, is expanding their product offering to include a wireless scale. The scale, known as the Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale was actually developed as a product based on feedback from the Fitbit user community who asked for an easier [...]

I am so excited, the latest in personal fitness tracking tools has arrived! This week Nike announced the NIKE+ FuelBand, a wristband that measures the number of steps you take along with calories burned and then calculates a proprietary metric, NikeFuel to help you gauge your overall activity. The NIKE+ FuelBand is one of many [...]

Let’s face it. In our heads, we know we need to change our behavior in order to see positive results in our metrics. But changing our habits and creating new ones is just plain hard. There comes a point when you’ve gathered all the data, you’ve internalized it and truly understand the meaning of your metrics, [...]

Back in July, I wrote about the Jawbone Up announcement at TED Global. I’ve been anxiously waiting for the device to launch for months, but after using it for 4 days, I have to say I was really underwhelmed and disappointed. I think the product could be really great. But as a first release, it [...]

I have a growing concern that we’re innovating like crazy to develop devices, platforms, and systems to track data about our lives, but not doing enough about interpreting that data. What’s the value of data without context? What’s the use of information with action? What’s the purpose of aggregating metrics without assessing their impact? We [...]

After studying Personal Metrics for a while, I’ve realized that creating products or services that are rooted in Personal Metrics is very similar to designing games. I should note that I am not a game designer, however, I am fascinated with the psychology and neuropsychology of how game mechanics affect us as emotionally responsive beings. [...]

The idea that measuring behavior can drive behavior is central to game mechanics. By providing players with performance cues, the player alters their behavior to get to the next reward. But can this concept that has been adopted by verticals such as health, fitness, and finance thrive in the workplace to motivate employees and drive [...]

About Personal Metrics

The marriage of lifestyle and technology has given way to a new capacity for understanding the effects of how we live our lives with more clarity than ever before. Personal Metrics provide transparent and meaningful feedback about the effects of our actions, an in turn, equip us with the information we need to improve areas of our lifestyles by thoughtfully changing habits and behavior.